Water
Supply and Public Health
In 1879, William Hunter noted that the hill
people displayed great ingenuity in cutting channels or aqueducts for leading
the water on to their fields[1].
It was in this manner that the Civil Station of Shillong received its water
supply.
Aqueducts conveyed water to the houses of all the Europeans residents, and channels from the aqueduct flowed through the bazaar, and along the streets occupied by the native inhabitants. A few embankments, or rather dams, were thrown across narrow valleys between hills, so as to create reservoirs for water. At Shillong there were a few such tanks, which were both useful and ornamental (that’s how the Hopkinson’s Tank got its name).
Aqueducts conveyed water to the houses of all the Europeans residents, and channels from the aqueduct flowed through the bazaar, and along the streets occupied by the native inhabitants. A few embankments, or rather dams, were thrown across narrow valleys between hills, so as to create reservoirs for water. At Shillong there were a few such tanks, which were both useful and ornamental (that’s how the Hopkinson’s Tank got its name).
The Station of Shillong,
which consumed coal as fuel, derived its supply from the coal beds at
Mao-beh-lyrkar 18 miles away, and the price was as high as £3 per ton.
In 1879, sanitary work was principally
confined to improvements in the water supply[2].
Schemes were sanctioned for supplying Maokhar near Shillong with good water,
and considerable progress was made in carrying them into execution. In 1880,
valuable improvements were made to the water supply of Shillong.
In 1879, William Hunter noted that, the
climate of Shillong was pleasant and congenial to Europeans[3].
English children thrived remarkably, and there were few indigenous diseases of
any kind. Malarious fevers of local origin were unknown, and cholera never
prevailed in the Hills except when directly imported from the plains.
Small-pox was the chief scourge amongst the
Khasis. The faces of more than half the people are seamed by the marks of this
disease. By 1879, strenuous efforts were made to introduce vaccination with
some success. Dysentery and bowel complaints generally prevailed to a
considerable extent, and, as at most other hill stations in India, the English
residents at Shillong occasionally suffered from these diseases. Disorders of
the liver were also not uncommon, usually affecting persons who have recently
arrived from the plains, probably from unhealthy localities. When they had once
passed through a short period of acclimatizing indisposition, most English
residents at Shillong enjoyed excellent health.
The tarai
country lying along the foot of the Khasi Hills, especially on the northern
side, was extremely malarious, and people passing through, especially
pedestrians who traveled without comforts and exposed themselves to great
fatigue, contracted remittent fevers and agues of a severe type.
The sanitary condition of the Station of
Shillong was described as ‘good’. The
natura1 drainage was excellent. Drinking water was obtained chiefly from hill
streams, and on the banks of these streams conservancy regulations were
enforced. The water was conducted into the town by means of an artificial
water-course. Public latrines had been erected at suitable places inside the
town. The staff of sweepers and beldars
kept the roads and drains clean, and the surface generally free from pollution.
The sanitary condition of the cantonment was reported to be very good.
At that time, cholera did not often appear in
the hills, and was regarded by the Khasis with a wholesome terror[4].
In 1879, there was a severe epidemic in the neighbourhood of Shillong. In
Maokhar there were 144 deaths. In the village of Maopat there were 105 deaths,
and many other villages in the neighbourhood of Shillong suffered terribly. On
the appearance of the disease the villagers in many cases abandoned their
homes, leaving the dead unburied and the sick to tend for themselves.
For several months of
the year 1879, the Welsh Missionary work in the Shillong District was at a
complete standstill owing to a terrible outbreak of cholera. The scourge made
fearful ravages among the people, hundreds being swept away daily. Whole
villages became completely deserted, the people fleeing to the jungles at the
first appearance of the scourge. Mawkhar was the native portion of Shillong,
with a large population numbering several thousands. There all had fled, with
the exception of Jerman Jones and his two servants, and one other family.
The heroic conduct of
"Saheb Jerman" during the
outbreak would always be remembered, day and night visiting the deserted
villages, succouring the forsaken sufferers, rescuing babies and little
children from the arms of their dead and dying mothers, and burying many of the
dead with his own hands. As the result of a movement enthusiastically headed by
the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, a handsome address and timepiece were
presented to the Missionary by the European residents "as a mark of their admiration of his noble
conduct during the outbreak of cholera in Shillong, June, 1879."
In 1880, Ethel S. Clair Grimwood, the wife of
a British civil servant (Political Agent of Manipur at the time)[5],
had the following description of Shillong and the unique Khoh-kit-briew (or Toppah):
“Shillong is a lovely little station nestling away amongst the
Khasia Hills, in the midst of pine woods, and abounding in waterfalls and
mountain torrents. The climate is delicious all the year round, and the riding
and driving as good, if not better, than any hill-station in India. Life there
was very pleasant, not a superabundance of gaiety, but quite enough to be
enjoyable. I have spent some very happy days there with some good friends, many
of whom, alas! I can never hope to see again; and the memories that come to me
of Shillong and my sojourn there are tinged with sadness and regret, even
though those days were good and pleasant while they lasted.
Things have changed there now, that is, as far as the comings
and goings of men change, but the hills remain the same, and the face of Nature
will not alter. Her streams will whisper to the rocks and flowers of all that
has been and that is to be. So runs the world. Where others lived and loved,
sorrowed and died, two hundred years ago, we are living now, and when our day
is over and done there will be others to take our place, until a time comes
when there shall be no more change, neither sorrow nor death, and the former
things shall have passed away for ever.
I left Shillong early in November 1889, travelling part of the
way towards Manipur quite alone, and had a terrible experience too. I had
arranged to journey a distance of thirty-eight miles in one day. I sent one of
my horses on the day before, and started in a Khasia Thoppa down the last hill
of the range upon which Shillong is situated, which brings you down into the
plain of Sylhet. A Thoppa is a very curious mode of locomotion. It is a long
cane basket, with a seat in the middle, from which hangs a small board to rest
your feet upon. Over your head is a covered top made of cane, covered with a
cloth. You sit in this basket and a man carries you on his back, supporting
some of the weight by tying a strap woven of cane on to the back of the Thoppa,
which he puts over his forehead.
The Khasias, luckily, are very strong men, but they think it
necessary always to begin by informing you that you are much too heavy to be
lifted by any single individual, unless that said individual be compensated at
the end of the journey with double pay.
You ask him what you weigh, and he scratches an excessively
dirty head, shuts up one eye, spits a quantity of horrible red fluid out of his
mouth, and then informs you that he should put you down as eighteen or nineteen
stone, and he even will go as far as twenty sometimes. This, to a slim,
elegant-looking person, partakes of the nature of an insult, but eventually he
picks you up on his back and proceeds along the road with you as fast as he
can, as if you were a feather weight.
Going along backwards, and knowing that, should the man's head
strap break, the chances are you will be precipitated down the Khud , are
certainly not pleasurable sensations; but it is astonishing how exceedingly
callous you become after a lengthy course of Thoppa rides up in the hills.
Sometimes your Thoppawallah may be
slightly inebriated, when he will lurch about in a horrible manner, emit a
number of curious gurgling noises from the depths of his throat, and eventually
tumble down in the centre of the road, causing you grievous hurt.
At other times he will take into consideration that it is a cold
night, the Memsahib is going to a Nautch , and will be there four or five
hours, while he is left to his own reflections outside, waiting to carry her
home again when her festivities have subsided. Having arrived at the conclusion
that the cold will probably by that time be intense, he will come to take you
to the scene of action enveloped in every covering that he can get together.
After he has carried you a short way he begins getting hot, and
rapidly divests himself of his many wrappers, placing them on the top of your
machine, where they flutter about, hitting you now and then playfully in the
mouth or eye, as the case may be, and making themselves as generally unpleasant
as they possibly can. Having done so, they end by falling off into the road.
Your Khasia perceives them, and immediately descends with you on to his hands
and knees, and grovels about until he recovers the fallen raiment.
During this process your head assumes a downward tendency, and
your heels fly heavenwards; and should you move in anyway ever so slightly, you
immediately find yourself sitting on the ground in a more hasty than dignified
attitude, upbraiding your Khasia in English. You may swear at a native and
abuse all his relations, as their custom is, in his own language, and you will
not impress him in any way; but use good sound fish-wife English, and he will
treat you as a person worthy of respect.”
By 1880, the Brahmo Samaj’s effort to introduce education to the Khasi Hills was
bearing fruit. In that year, Sib Charan Roy, son of Babu Jeebon Roy, had passed
his first Entrance Examination from Shillong Government High School.
Col. Keatinge had an idea for establishment
of a school for European and Eurasian children at Shillong because of the
fascinating climate throughout the year. As a result, the European and Eurasian
Girls Boarding and Day School was started on 1 March 1881 at Shillong. The School was later renamed as the Shillong
Government School for European and Eurasian Children.
In 1881, the Journal of the
Statistical Society of London referred to the discovery of the magnificent
plateau of Shillong[6]. Shillong was screened by
a high range of hills from the excessive rainfall experienced in Chirrapoonjee,
and situated in the very heart of the hills; it was also protected from the
malarious emanations of the valley of Assam. An easy carriage road, about 60
miles long, connected it with Gowhatty, the chief port of the Brahmapootra.
Shillong had its racecourse
and its polo and cricket ground, and the roads were so level as to allow of the
employment of wheeled carriages. The country in its neighbourhood was gently
undulating, and had very much the appearance of some parts of the Surrey or
Cotswold Hills. Indeed the neighbourhood of Shillong was so practicable, that
in several directions a man could ride 10 or 12 miles at a gallop without
drawing rein.
The landscape was well
watered and wooded with beautiful glens, mountain streams, and splendid
waterfalls. The ‘Bishop's Falls’ plunged down a mountain gorge in one unbroken
sheet of water to a depth of 410 feet. The soil of Shillong was not very good,
but the potato was cultivated with great success. Besides being the seat of
Government for the province of Assam, it was also the headquarters of the
military force on the north east frontier.
The establishment of Shillong was
of the greatest value to the tea planters in Assam and Sylhet from a sanitary
point of view. They could escape from the malarious localities in which they
had to work. They built themselves houses at Shillong in which their wives and
families resided during the unhealthy season, and to which they could
immediately repair when taken ill. By 1881, in short, Shillong was to Assam
pretty much what some of the mountain cities of South America were to the
seaboard.
In 1882, from a sanitary point of
view, little was done due to shortage of funds. The chief improvements were the
introduction of a constant water-supply into the civil station of Shillong by
iron pipes instead of open ducts[7].
In 1883, the new water supply for Shillong was completed.
On 27 April 1883, La Touche wrote to his
father from Ashley Hall, Shillong[8]:
“I have been here now nearly
three weeks and like the place very much. It is one of the prettiest
places in the hills and certainly the best I have seen for a large hill station
as the ground is level enough for good roads and there are plenty of trees all
pines and a good water supply. Nearly every house has a small stream
though its grounds. My house is a pretty little one with a good garden, I
have been growing vegetable seeds and hope they will do well.
...The jungle was very thick,
mostly bamboos, but fortunately dry during the cold season so I escaped with
only a few slight touches of fever. My servants did not escape so well,
and one of them is still down at times with it. That part of the country
was at one time more thickly populated than it is now, but the Barmese in their
raids seem to have exterminated them - One comes across the ruins of temples
and tanks in the midst of dense jungle - sometimes with stone carvings of
Hindoo gods.
The worst of the jungle is that as soon as the rain
begins, swarms of leeches make their appearance so that on the march one
gathers them up in crowds - they are about ½ inch long and make a very nasty
bite. I have to keep to the house now because some bites I got 4 or 5
weeks ago have just broken out, and I can't get my shoes on.”
The Welsh Mission High School was
started in 1884 with the help of Rev. Jerman Jones. Today, this school is known
as Khasi and Jaintia Presbyterian School. In the beginning, the European and
Eurasian Girls Boarding and Day School, was made co-educational till 1 March 1883
and was continued for girls only till December 1886.
At this
time, the Brahmos, especially women,
joined in many constructive programmes. A Mahila
Samiti was established in 1885-86 with the initiative of Hemanta Kumari.
The reformative attitude of Brahmo Samaj
gave a moral boost to its followers, at a time when Bengalee women were not even
allowed to go outside the house.
The 43rd (Assam) Regiment of
Bengal Native (Light) Infantry had its depot in Shillong[9]. It was raised on
13 April 1835 as the Assam Sebundy Corps and was renamed four times before
being known as the 43rd (Assam) Regiment of Bengal Native (Light)
Infantry from 1864 to 1885. In 1886, it was renamed the 43rd
Regiment Goorkha (Light) Infantry. This Regiment was linked with the 42nd
and 44th Regiments[10].
Notably, this Regiment was part of the Burmah Expeditionary Force. The uniform
was dark green with black facings.
Similarly, the 44rd (Sylhet)
Regiment of Bengal Native (Light) Infantry also had its depot in Shillong. It
was raised on 19 February 1824 as the 16th Sylhet Local Battalion
and was renamed thrice before being known as the 44rd (Sylhet)
Regiment of Bengal Native (Light) Infantry from 1864 to 1885. In 1886, it was
renamed the 44rd Regiment Gurkha (Light) Infantry. This Regiment was
linked with the 42nd and 43th Regiments. Their Head
Quarter was in Manipore. The uniform was dark green with black facings.
The 6th Bengal Native (Light) Infantry was
raised in 1803. Also known as Kyne-ke-daheena
Pultun, this Regiment was linked with the 4th and 5th Regiments. Their Head
Quarters was in Shillong, with detachments at Dibrooghur, Jowai and Silchar.
Their uniform was red, with white facings.
In 1886 the first chapel built by the Welsh
Mission workers in Shillong was destroyed by an earthquake. European
sympathisers contributed one-fourth of the £800 required for its re-erection.
Among the contributors were Sir Charles Elliott (Chief Commissioner of Assam),
Colonel Peet and Mr. Greer (Deputy Commissioners), Colonel Woodthorpe, General
Gordon, Mr. C. J. (later Sir Charles) Lyall, and many others. On 4 July 1886,
an obelisk was erected in memory of T. J. Willans a
former Executive Engineer of the district[11].
This monument stands in front of the present day Shillong Club.
On 10 August 1886, La Touche wrote the
following from Shillong[12]:
“I have brought a friend up here
to keep me company. His name is Middlemiss & he is also in the Geol(ogical)
Survey, so of course he is a jolly good fellow. We had a miserable
journey up here from Gauhati in the tonga. The distance is 63 miles and
we took over 18 hours over it. The road is full of holes in places and in
others I covered with new metal so that the ponies could hardly get along.
On the last two or three stages the ponies would stop every fifty or sixty
yards and we had to get out and put our shoulders to the wheel and walk the
greater part of the distance. Then to make matters worse it began to pour
with rain about sunset and rained hard until we got in at 12 o'clock at
night. I never had such a journey in my life.”
In 1886 Charles Stuart Middlemiss and LaTouche were both
in Shillong, and although within six days Middlemiss had succumbed to a two
week bout of malaria, Middlemiss recalls LaTouche fixing the organ at All
Saints church, which was later destroyed by the 1897 earthquake[13].
Amjad
Ali passed the Matriculation Examination in 1887 from the Mawkhar High School.
He entered Government service as a clerk and rose to the position of Assistant
Registrar General of Registration, Assam. He was a fingerprint expert, the
first ever in Shillong. Amjad Ali was the legal advisor to the Syiems of Mylliem, Khyrim and Sohiong.
What distinguished Amjad Ali was that he was a Bengali Muslim who lived and
died amongst the Khasis.
In about 1887, an important public work was
carried out in Shillong. A water supply was derived from the neighbouring
streams, and was distributed in pipes all over the town. The bazaar contained a few shops, at which
both European and locals could satisfy most of their requirements, while the
Khasi market was one of the principal centres of trade in the hills.
Soon after the Shillong-Gauhati
road was completed a tonga service
was started in 1887. It required a relay of horses and carts stationed at
intervals to complete the journey in two days. The pony cart service remained in operation
till 1905.
Jessie Moore was the wife of a missionary,
the Late Pitt Moore. On 1 August 1887, she was on her way to Shillong along
with a Miss Purssell:
"Left Gauhati this morning
for Shillong. We three engaged seats in the Tonga (a kind of covered buggy
drawn by two ponies) for rupees sixty. The distance to Shillong from Gauhati is
64 miles. As the ponies get changed for fresh ones every 7 miles, we came up
the hills at a good speed, and reached Shillong at 5 p.m."[14]
In 1887, the Welsh
Presbyterian Girls School was opened in Shillong.
In 1888, Kasimuddin Molla
secured a contract from the Government for a horse drawn tonga service between Shillong Station and Gauhati. Even before the
bullock carts plied on the gravel road, taking three days to complete the
journey, the tonga service used to
cover the journey of 64 miles, up and down in a single day. There were 12
stables along the road so that after every 5 or 6 miles, horses were changed
for the sake of speed. The passenger freight was Rs.30 either way though
concessional rate was allowed for Government officials.
James Wallace Quinton[15],
(1834–1891) was the son of a wine merchant in Enniskillen, and was educated at
Trinity College, Dublin, and graduated in 1853. He joined the Bengal Civil Service
in 1856 and towards the end of his career, on 22 October 1889, he was appointed
the Chief Commissioner of Assam (1889–1891).
In March 1891, owing to a
rebellion having broken out in the small native state of Manipur, led by two of
the younger brothers of the Raja, who
abdicated and took refuge at Calcutta, Quinton was sent to Manipur with an
escort of five hundred Ghurkhas, and with instructions to recognise as the
ruler of the state the second brother, who was acting as regent, and to arrest
one of the younger brothers, who, as Senapati,
or commander of the forces, had been the prime mover in the deposition of the
late Raja.
Quinton reached Manipur on
22 March 1891, and at once summoned a durbar,
at which he intended to arrest the Senapati.
The latter, however, did not attend, and upon an attempt being made on the
following day to arrest him in the fort, resistance was made by the Manipur
troops, and was followed by an attack upon the British residency and camp,
attended by considerable slaughter.
Quinton thereupon offered to
treat with the rebels, and was induced to repair to the fort, accompanied by
Frank St. Clair Grimwood (the Political Agent), by Colonel Skene (the officer
commanding the Ghurkhas), and by two other officers, all without arms.
Immediately on their arrival they were taken prisoners and murdered.
Quinton's hand was cut off,
his body hacked to pieces, and his dismembered limbs thrown outside the city
walls to be devoured by pariah dogs. Manipur was subsequently retaken by a
British force, the Senapati was
hanged, and the regent deposed. A young boy belonging to the family was
recognised as Raja, and during his
minority the government of the state was entrusted to a British officer as
Political Resident.
The Quinton Memorial was
erected in Shillong in his honour. The Memorial, which
was a stone spire, collapsed during the Great Assam Earthquake of 1897. The
stones that were used to build this Memorial were piled around its base.
In 1889, travellers were informed by Henry
Blanford that the Shillong ridge, immediately to the south of the station,
dominated it by more than 1000 feet, and that to the north, the general level
of the plateau fell away gradually towards the Brahmaputra[16].
The surface of the plateau around Shillong, as indeed of the Khasi Hills
generally, was a rolling green sward, with occasional clumps of pines.
Trees were for the most part restricted to
the valleys which, in the course of ages, had been eroded by the hill drainage,
the higher parts of the surface being kept clear of forest by the fires
annually kindled by the locals for the destruction of the native grass and the
stimulation of a young growth fitted for pasture.
Owing partly to the difficulty of access
from other provinces, and partly to the want of spare house accommodation,
Shillong till then had been little visited by people other than the Government
officials and a few residents of the Assam valley. The former obastacle had
recently been removed by the completion of the railway from Calcutta to Dhubri,
and the establishment of a line of swift steamers daily from that place to
Gauhati, from which Shillong could be reached in 10 hours.
When new houses were provided to meet the
increasing demand, it would be expected that in the course of a few years, the
place would be better known. A station which, in its mild climate and open
downs, held forth to the residents of Bengal many of those attractions which
made the Madras Nilgiris so charming a resort, would attract from the
overcrowded boarding-houses of Darjiling some of those who seek a temporary
refuge from the “branding summers of
Bengal.”
The late 19th century and the first
two decades of the 20th century were significant in the history of the
Khasi-Jaintias and the communities residing in these hills. It was a time of
religious revival for the Khasis. Several
Christian denominations took roots, it saw a resurgence of the Khasi faith, and
it was also a time of cultural admixture.
The Roman Catholic Mission
entered the Khasi Hills in 1890 and made new converts of about 900 persons by 1905.
The Catholic Mission was to play a major role in the field of education in
Shillong. The first of the Irish Christian Brothers arrived in Calcutta in
January 1890[17].
[1] A statistical account of Assam,
Volume 2, 1879, William Wilson Hunter, Trubner & Co., London. University of
Michigan, Pg.214-264.
[2]Transactions
of the Seventh International Congress of Hygiene and Demography, London, August
(1892), Charles
Edward Shelly,1892. http://www.archive.org/details/transactionssev01shelgoog.
[3]A
statistical account of Assam, Volume 2, 1879, William Wilson Hunter, Trubner
& Co., London. University of Michigan, Pg.214-264.
[4]Assam
district gazetteers, Volume 10, B.C. Allen, Baptist Mission Press, 1906,
Harvard University. http://www.archive.org/stream/assamdistrictga00allegoog#page/n48/mode/1up.
[5]My Three
Years in Manipur and Escape from the Recent Mutiny (1891), Ethel Grimwood.
University of Michigan. http://www.archive.org/details/mythreeyearsinm00grimgoog.
[7]Transactions
of the Seventh International Congress of Hygiene and Demography, London, August
(1892), Charles
Edward Shelly,1892. http://www.archive.org/details/transactionssev01shelgoog.
[8]Page 3 of 11. An Electronic Supplement to Bilham, R.,Tom
LaTouche and the Great Assam Earthquake of 12 June 1897: letters from the
epicenter. Seism. Res. Lett. 79(3), 426-437, 2008. doi:
10.1785/gssrl.79.3.426.
[9]The Gurkhas,
settlement and society : with reference to Shillong, 1867-1969 / Sanjay Rana.
New Delhi : Mittal Publications, 2008.
[11]Electronic
Supplement to Tom LaTouche and the Great Assam Earthquake of 12 June 1897:
Letters from the Epicenter, by Roger Bilham, University of Colorado at Boulder.
[12]Page 3
of 11. An
Electronic Supplement to Bilham, R.,Tom LaTouche and the Great Assam Earthquake
of 12 June 1897: letters from the epicenter. Seism. Res. Lett. 79(3),
426-437, 2008. doi: 10.1785/gssrl.79.3.426.
[13]Page 11 of 11. An Electronic Supplement to Bilham, R.,Tom
LaTouche and the Great Assam Earthquake of 12 June 1897: letters from the
epicenter. Seism. Res. Lett. 79(3), 426-437, 2008. doi:
10.1785/gssrl.79.3.426.
[14]Moore, P.H;
Twenty Years in Assam, New Delhi, 1901(Reprinted in 1982), pp. 84-85.
[15]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Wallace_Quinton.
[16]A practical
guide to the climates and weather of India, Ceylon and Burmah and the storms of
Indian Seas, Henry Francis Blanford, Macmillan, London, 1889, pg. 112-113.
Based chiefly on the publications of the Indian Meteorological Department.
http://www.archive.org/stream/practicalguideto00blanuoft#page/113/mode/1up.
No comments:
Post a Comment